On Friday 12 June, 30 people filled a screen at Wildwood Cinema in Peterborough for the premiere of My Mother’s Spices, the first film written and directed by Nadia Nadarajah. Nadia has put together a short video of the evening, in British Sign Language with captions, and with Diwali falling this Sunday it felt like the right weekend to share it.
What the film is about
My Mother’s Spices is a short drama in BSL, made by Slick Films for LumoTV, the online home of deaf entertainment. It stars Ruchika Jain and Sankeetha Gathani.
Kaavia, a deaf British-Sri Lankan woman, returns to her quiet childhood home after her mother is taken into hospital. She finds her mother’s jar of Jaffna curry powder empty and sets about grinding the spices herself. As she cooks, past and present come together. Mother and daughter clash over culture, language and the pull of Western life, and a long-hidden memory of survival in Sri Lanka opens the way to healing.
The story began as a ten-minute play at the Edinburgh Fringe before Nadia developed it into a film.
The premiere in Peterborough
LumoTV released the film online on the same day, but Nadia wanted the people around her to see it on a big screen together. Nadia is well known as an actor on stage and screen, and to many people in Cambridgeshire as the host of Thrive Live, the monthly BSL show made by deaf women. As she says in the video, this is her local community.
Cambridgeshire Deaf Association hosted the screening at Wildwood in Cathedral Square on Friday 12 June at 7.00pm. Guests ate together first, then went through to the screening room. Tickets were £10 and limited to 30, and the evening was fully accessible with captions and BSL and English interpretation. People came from Peterborough and from as far as London. After the film there was a question and answer session with Nadia, hosted by Annabelle Davis, about the story, the casting and how it felt to see her own work on screen for the first time.
In the video you can see the popcorn going round, the applause at the end and the reactions afterwards. “Mind blowing,” said one person. “I feel connected to the film,” said another.
“It’s my first film. Thank you to everybody for coming. I really enjoyed the evening. If you haven’t seen my film, you can watch it via the link. Well worth a watch. Happy Diwali!”
Nadia Nadarajah, writer and director of My Mother’s Spices
Watch the film
My Mother’s Spices is free to watch on LumoTV.
Happy Diwali
Diwali, the festival of lights, falls on Sunday 8 November this year. To everyone in the deaf community across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough who is celebrating, and to Nadia and her family, Happy Diwali from all of us at Cambridgeshire Deaf Association.
If you know someone who would enjoy the film, please pass it on.
